


Delicate

by serenbach



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenbach/pseuds/serenbach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't ashamed of what he felt for her. If anything, he was ashamed that he wasn't ashamed. Yuffentine song-meme, ten drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delicate

1- Prodigal, One Republic. 

_‘Run away, run away, like a prodigal  
Don't you wait for me, don't you wait for me,   
So ashamed, so ashamed, but I need you so   
And you wait for me, and you wait for me…’_

He hates to leave her, but sometimes he can’t stand to be around her. 

He doesn’t know how it happened, how he became so dependant on _her_ , of all people. He doesn’t know why he needs her the way he does.

And though he would never admit it in words, it frightens him.

So he leaves her, again and again. Not always for very long, days perhaps, or just a few weeks. Just long enough for him to catch his breath, convince himself that he could live without her, if he needed to. 

Just couple of days, weeks at the most, is long enough to realise that he can’t. So he goes back to her, ashamed and hopeful at once, part of him expecting that this time will be the time that she has had enough, the time she decides that she doesn’t need him anymore, the time she tells him that she’s found someone more fun, or more reliable.

She never has. She greets him with a smile and a punch in the good arm that’s just a little too forceful to be affectionate and he is content. 

For a while, at least. 

\------

2- Sanctuary, Utada Hikaru. 

_‘I watch you fast asleep  
All I fear, means nothing…’_

For as long as she’d known him, Vincent had suffered from nightmares. It was an open secret among their group- not a shameful one, they couldn’t have gone through all they did without having the occasional nightmare- but one they knew he didn’t want to talk about.

Everything he bottled up during the day came out in his dreams, wordless snarls and whimpers that spoke of horrors none of them could imagine.

But his sleep in the last few weeks had been deep and peaceful. He’d even started snoring (something he strenuously denied). She liked to think she had something to do with it; whether it was because she tired him out so thoroughly before he slept, or because subconsciously, he knew she was there, she didn’t know. 

She did know, however, that watching Vincent sleep so peacefully had become her most favourite thing in the whole world.

Even more than materia (not that she’d ever tell him that). 

\------

3- 24, Jem.

_‘In 24 hours, they'll be laying flowers  
On my life, it's over tonight.  
I'm not messing, no, I need your blessing  
And your promise to live free, please do it for me…’_

“Vinnie, what’s the point in having a phone if you never switch it _on!_

Well, I’m calling coz that mission Reeve sent me on has gone kinda wrong. Well, totally wrong. I’m pretty much screwed, actually. And I just wanted to say sorry for that time I used your cloak as a chocobo blanket and plaited daisies into your hair. Oh, and that time I stuck ‘word of the day’ fridge magnets all over your shoes and made sure to pick all the dirty words. And that time I broke into the mansion and put a whoopee cushion into your coffin. Actually, I’m not sorry about that one. I’m sorry about the time I stole your materia and called you a hundred times in a row because I thought it was funny listening to your teeth grind over the phone.

And I’m sorry about all that stuff but I’m not sorry I tried to make you smile. And I just need to know that you’ll try to smile even when I’m not here to make you. Promise me, okay?

Aw, crap, they’ve found me. I love you, Vince, but you probably -” 

\------

4- Shadow of the Day, Boyce Avenue.

_‘In cards and flowers on your window,  
Your friends all plead for you to stay.  
And the sun will set for you…’_

He’d always known that he’d ruin her life. He should have known better than to give in to her pleading. No matter how much he’d wanted it too, he should have turned her away. People didn’t die of a broken heart, no matter what she claimed.

They did die of haemorrhaging, though. Sometimes, there were things that couldn’t be fixed by medicine or magic. 

He should have known better than to touch her. He knew that he wasn’t human- how could he have risked letting her carry his child? How could he have let her go through with it, knowing the dangers? 

He’d lost them both, his wife and his unborn child, because of his selfishness. His stupidity. 

The condolence cards from their friends mocked him. None of them came out and said it, but he knew they blamed him too. After all, it was his fault. He should have left her well alone. 

It would have been wroth breaking her heart, to save her life.

He truly was the monster she’d always claimed he wasn’t. 

\------ 

5- Skin, Alexz Johnson.

_‘I do believe you didn't try,  
I do blame you for every lie,  
When I look in your eyes, I don't see mine…’_

She was so tired of him lying to her. 

Not in words, when Vincent Valentine deigned to speak to her he was always honest, sometimes even to the point of brutality.

He lied to her every time he let her touch him. Every time he didn’t pull away when she kissed him. Every time he followed her willingly to her room. 

He let her believe that he was moving on. He let her believe that he wanted her, for herself, and not just taking what she was offering (he may deny it, but he was a man after all, with a man’s needs). 

What they had was just a surface thing, just skin deep. She didn’t have him, just his body, his physical reactions. Every time he closed his eyes, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering who it was he was thinking of.

She couldn’t take it anymore. It was making her bitter and twisted on the inside.

It was turning her into Vincent. And as much as she loved him, she didn’t want to be like him.

She knew what she had to do. It would hurt, of course, but it wouldn’t hurt as much as having him without truly having him at all. 

She was the Great Ninja Yuffie Kisaragi, White Rose of Wutai. She would never settle for being anybody’s second best. 

\------

6- Delicate, Damien Rice. 

_‘We might kiss when we are alone,  
When nobody's watching, we might take it home.  
We might make out when nobody's there,  
It's not that we're scared, it's just that it's delicate…’_

They had been watching each other all night, as subtly as possible.

And he was far more subtle than her, despite her claims of being an ‘awesome, kick-ass ninja spy.’ Her crush on him had always been general knowledge.

No-one had ever guessed that it might be reciprocated on his part. 

They were waiting for the prime moment to slip away, for their friends to be too drunk, or too busy to notice them.

It always took time, longer than he would like, even with his iron-hard self control. While he could have pretty much slipped out whenever he wanted, she was the life and soul of the party. It would be far too obvious for her to leave until everyone one else had practically passed out. 

Only then did they retire to one of their bedrooms, kissing and caressing and moving together in a way that only hours of anticipation and restraint could fuel.

He wasn’t ashamed of what he felt for her. If anything, he was ashamed that he wasn’t ashamed. She wasn’t ashamed of him, either, or so he hoped.

They just didn’t want the others to know, not yet. Not while this was still so new and delicate. It would be ruined by their comments and speculations and jokes, no matter how well-meaning. 

For once, he had a secret that he enjoyed keeping. He wasn’t ready to let it go. Not yet. 

\------

7- I‘ll Look After You, The Fray 

_‘It's always have and never hold  
You've begun to feel like home  
What's mine is yours to leave or take  
What's mine is yours to make your own…’_

He couldn’t remember the last time he had a home. 

When he was a child, he supposed, before he left to join the Turks. Before he started on the road that led him to Lucrecia and his downfall, and ultimately, to his resuscitation and his redemption.

To Yuffie. 

He wouldn’t have believed it when they first met, but coming home to find her already asleep in his bed, wearing one of his shirts, was worth thirty years of nightmares.

Her sleepy grumble turning into a content sigh as he slid carefully into bed beside her and put his arm around her made him think that another thirty wouldn’t have been too high a price to pay. 

She was his, completely. Well, not quite completely. But he was sure that she would be, as soon as he worked up the courage to give her the ring he’d been carrying around in his cloak for a month.

She was his home now.

\------

8- Union Street (Last Post), Show of Hands.

_‘Amongst the broken glass, the drunks and fights,  
Captured there in your own light,  
You shine the path before me, no matter where I go…’_

Wherever Yuffie Kisaragi went, there was trouble. 

This was one of the known facts of the universe, as commonly accepted as gravity.

This time, however, the trouble was his fault. 

They’d been in Tifa’s bar that evening. She’d dragged him there after a mission for Reeve, claiming he needed to wind down. 

He hadn’t bothered arguing. Yuffie was a force of nature when she wanted something, and in comparison to some of the things she’d talked him into, this was totally harmless.

So he’d thought, anyway.

When they arrived at the bar, they found it to be unexpectedly busy for a Wednesday night. He’d cleared his way to a table using nothing more than his glare, but soon realised that Yuffie hadn’t followed him. She’d bounded over to the bar, rescuing a very grateful Tifa.

Despite the crowd (who had the sense to leave him alone) it had been a peaceful evening. For want of anything better to do, he’d watched Yuffie while she handed out drinks and collected dirty glasses, their incredibly busy day apparently forgotten.

It had been almost closing time when he noticed an extremely drunk man pawing at Yuffie. Normally, she would have kicked him off, probably picking his pocket in the process. But her hands were full of glasses and she was blocked in at all sides from eager customers. 

Before he’d even registered what he was doing, he’d crossed the bar in three long strides and punched the offending man straight in the face. He’d been lucky he hadn’t used his claw.

Unfortunately, as the man toppled backwards, he knocked Yuffie’s tray out of her hands and broke a table, causing as much chaos as Yuffie would probably managed on her own.

Tifa had made him clean up the mess later. 

To his surprise, Yuffie helped. She hadn’t stopped smiling since it happened, either. 

\------

9- Samson, Regina Spektor.

_‘And the history books forgot about us…’_

The years following the Omega crisis were generally regarded as peaceful ones, attributed mostly to the old AVALANCHE gang.

The WRO succeeded in restoring the damage caused by Shinra. Barret Wallace’s discovery of renewable energy sources prevented future pollution. Cid Highwind’s Space Program made many important discoveries and inspired a new generation of adventurers. Cosmo Canyon became the Planet’s centre of learning, where the importance of the sacrifices of the past were preserved. The Strife-Lockhart Children’s Charity provided homes and shelter for many who needed it, and prevented much hardship in the future. 

And Wutai became the great nation it once was, ruled wisely by its Lord and Lady.

No-one recorded the fate of the lone gunman who had once saved the world. No-one seemed to realise he disappeared for good on the day the new empress was married.

No-one ever seemed to wonder why it was that the once-gleeful White Rose of Wutai had stopped smiling. 

And certainly, no-one associated the two facts with each other. 

\------

10- Good Enough, Evanescence.

_‘And I'm still waiting for the rain to fall.  
Pour real life down on me.  
'Cause I can't hold on to anything this good enough.  
Am I good enough for you to love me too?’_

Sometimes, Yuffie couldn’t convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming. 

After all, how could Vincent Valentine, the Vincent Valentine, possibly be in love with her, the annoying, loud, thieving brat of the group?

What did she possibly have to offer him except a giant headache?

She couldn’t help being afraid that one day; he’d turn to her and see her for what she was, a terrified child desperately clinging to him. 

What would she do when he realised the truth? 

*

Sometimes, Vincent was convinced that this was all a trick thought up by the demons in his head.

After all, what could the light-hearted, fun-loving Yuffie Kisaragi possibly see in him, a man who had spent thirty years and more trapped in darkness both literal and metaphorical?

He knew that one day she would realise that he truly was a monster trapped in a not-quite human body that his silences and his issues would become too much for her to take.

He won’t blame her for leaving him, when that time comes.

He just doesn’t know what he’ll do without her.

**Author's Note:**

> _A/N: for anyone else who wants to try it, these are the song meme rules._
> 
> _Song-Fic Meme:  
>  1.] Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.  
> 2.] Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.  
> 3.] Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterward!  
> 4.] Do ten of these, then post them.  
> This was pretty fun, actually. Usually takes me much longer to write things out._


End file.
